Electrical filters have long been used in the processing of electrical signals. In particular, such electrical filters are used to select desired electrical signal frequencies from an input signal by passing the desired signal frequencies, while blocking or attenuating other undesirable electrical signal frequencies. Filters may be classified in some general categories that include low-pass filters, high-pass filters, band-pass filters, and band-stop filters, indicative of the type of frequencies that are selectively passed by the filter. Further, filters can be classified by type, such as Butterworth, Chebyshev, Inverse Chebyshev, and Elliptic, indicative of the type of bandshape frequency response (frequency cutoff characteristics) the filter provides relative to the ideal frequency response.
The type of filter used often depends upon the intended use. In communications applications, band pass and band stop filters are conventionally used in cellular base stations, cell phone handsets, and other telecommunications equipment to filter out or block RF signals in all but one or more predefined bands. Of most particular importance is the frequency range from approximately 500-3,500 MHz. In the United States, there are a number of standard bands used for cellular communications. These include Band 2 (˜1800-1900 MHz), Band 4 (˜1700-2100 MHz), Band 5 (˜800-900 MHz), Band 13 (˜700-800 MHz), and Band 17 (˜700-800 MHz); with other bands emerging.
Microwave filters are generally built using two circuit building blocks: a plurality of resonators, which store energy very efficiently at a resonant frequency (which may be a fundamental resonant frequency f0 or any one of a variety of higher order resonant frequencies f1-fn); and couplings, which couple electromagnetic energy between the resonators to form multiple reflection zeros providing a broader spectral response. For example, a four-resonator filter may include four reflection zeros. The strength of a given coupling is determined by its reactance (i.e., inductance and/or capacitance). The relative strengths of the couplings determine the filter shape, and the topology of the couplings determines whether the filter performs a band-pass or a band-stop function. The resonant frequency f0 is largely determined by the inductance and capacitance of the respective resonator. For conventional filter designs, the frequency at which the filter is active is determined by the resonant frequencies of the resonators that make up the filter. Each resonator must have very low internal resistance to enable the response of the filter to be sharp and highly selective for the reasons discussed above. This requirement for low resistance tends to drive the size and cost of the resonators for a given technology.
The duplexer, a specialized kind of filter is a key component in the front-end of mobile devices. Modern mobile communications devices transmit and receive at the same time (using LTE, WCDMA or CDMA) and use the same antenna. The duplexer separates the transmit signal, which can be up to 0.5 Watt power, from the receive signal, which can be as low as a pico-Watt. The transmit and receive signals are modulated on carriers at different frequencies allowing the duplexer to select them. The duplexer must provide the frequency selection, isolation and low insertion loss in a very small size often only about two millimeters square.
The front-end receive filter preferably takes the form of a sharply defined band-pass filter to eliminate various adverse effects resulting from strong interfering signals at frequencies near the desired received signal frequency. Because of the location of the front-end receiver filter at the antenna input, the insertion loss must be very low so as to not degrade the noise figure. In most filter technologies, achieving a low insertion loss requires a corresponding compromise in filter steepness or selectivity.
In practice, most filters for cell phone handsets are constructed using acoustic resonator technology, such as surface acoustic wave (SAW), bulk acoustic wave (BAW), and film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) technologies. The acoustic resonator has two resonances closely spaced in frequency called the “resonance” frequency and the “anti-resonance” frequency (see K. S. Van Dyke, Piezo-Electric Resonator and its Equivalent Network Proc. IRE, Vol. 16, 1928, pp. 742-764). Such acoustic resonators have the advantages of low insertion loss (on the order of 1 dB at the center frequency), compact size, and low cost compared to equivalent inductor/capacitor resonators. For this reason, acoustic resonator implementations are often used for microwave filtering applications in the front-end receive filter of mobile devices. Acoustic resonators are typically arranged in a ladder topology (alternating series and shunt resonators) in order to create band pass filters. Acoustic ladder filters have been very successful for handset applications, with more than a billion units currently sold each year.
The design of modern microwave filters with acoustic resonators requires detailed models to predict the frequency response of the filter, including the upper edge of the Bragg Band and the bulk acoustic loss. In particular, a typical acoustic resonator has a plurality of interdigitized fingers (e.g., 80-100 fingers) that reflect acoustic waves back and forth between the fingers. The bulk loss is an acoustic mode into which some of the acoustic energy is transferred when the fingers of the acoustic resonator are excited. The Bragg Band is the frequency band over which the acoustic reflections between the fingers add in phase to create the resonance. A discontinuity feature in the frequency response occurs at the upper edge of the Bragg Band, i.e., the highest frequency at which the acoustic reflections add in phase. Because the performance of the filter may be compromised if this discontinuity feature falls within the passband, it is important to determine the upper edge of the Bragg Band to ensure that the discontinuity feature falls well outside of the passband of the filter.
A typical acoustic filter design process requires the use of a training mask that consists of a collection of resonators that span the necessary resonator parameters, including, but not limited to, the number of finger pairs, aperture size, pitch, and transducer metal thickness. This training mask must be fabricated, which can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a month. The frequency responses of the training mask, which will include bulk loss and the discontinuity feature corresponding to the upper edge of the Bragg Band, are then measured, which are then used to create Coupling of Modes (COM) models to be used for the simulation, and ultimately the design, of the acoustic filters. Any errors in the training mask measurements can lead to less accurate COM models, which will result in poor correlations between the simulations and filter measurements.
There, thus, remains a need to provide a more efficient and accurate technique for modeling acoustic microwave filters.